Posse riot

With one scan to go and the most stressful oncologist's appointment a week away, I'm assembling my posse.

During my last marriage with deranged cells, I read a shit ton of books about nutrition, meditation, exercise, disease and treatment and have a pretty excellent base for understanding what a body does leading up to, during and after cancer. In a nutshell, eating your veggies, meditating and exercising every day can prevent disease and heal you.

I tried to be truly integrative, but most of it was self-directed and often inconsistent. This time, I'll be louder and prouder, I just don't know exactly what that will look like yet.

My GP is on my unpopular list right now, but I can only give myself seconds at a time to be pissed off that she didn't send me to a dermatologist back in October when I first went to her complaining of the rash on my chest that wasn't clearing up... or again in December after the ultrasound came back clear but the rash was still there. Months wasted trying to balance persistence with bat-shit crazy.

The dermatologist was a completely different story (and blog post) but I can at least credit her with staying late the first time I saw her so she could do the biopsy right away. That whole "cutting a piece of my flesh away five seconds after injecting me with freezing" bit is water under the bridge now.

My cancer doc is excellent. She's a bit of a sociopath, and not warm and fuzzy, but she can diagnose and treat the heck out of cancer in a traditionally hardcore and thoughtful way. She's got me covered on that front.

My massage therapist was a gem. He was one of the only adults, other than Pete, to see me bald, and was no nonsense about working out the kinks from head to toe while asking me a ton of thoughtful questions. I've booked his ass already.

I dabbled in naturopathy before and loved the hour-long discovery session where I was asked about everything from my favourite cereal growing up to my relationship with my brothers. But after the session, the push of probiotics felt a little pyramid scheme. I wanted to take my doc aside and give her advice on how to be a little less stereotypically gut flora-obsessed in her treatment approach, but instead I stole her holistic cancer treatment book and never returned it.

A colleague recently reminded me that there's a non-profit called Inspire Health in B.C. that focuses on truly integrative care for cancer patients. I would rather light myself on fire than call myself a cancer patient, but I'm willing to try this. For $450, you can do a full program with them that includes classes, counselling and group sessions with other sickies. The blog fodder alone is enough to make me want to go.

As Tyra would say, I'm going H to T with this dealio while I learn all over again that eating your veggies, meditating and exercising every day can heal you.